


What We Did In The Dark

by urami



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Other, Pre-Canon, Shadow People Culture, Tentacle Dick, Unplanned Pregnancy, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:20:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24745984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/urami/pseuds/urami
Summary: There was no way around it: she was pregnant.She was pregnant with the child of a monster.AKA: Sebastian's dad meets his mom. And then some.
Relationships: Robin/Krobus
Comments: 11
Kudos: 87





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been planning this for like three years, but only recently was able to get it to something reasonable to post, instead of just disjointed paragraphs. 
> 
> I wasn't really sure if I was going to go whole hog with the xeno, but I decided what the hell. It's been a while since I wrote anything this explicit. I hope it doesn't suck.

Part One

Robin felt sick as she stared down at the little plastic stick showing a plus sign. It was a Joja brand pregnancy test, not always the most known for accuracy, but it was the third one she’d taken and all had been positive. Unl;ess the JojaMart had gotten an entire shipment of defective tests, which wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, she was pregnant.

At first, when she’d felt ill every time she ate something, she thought (hoped) it was food poisoning. But with three positive tests, she knew the hope of recovering quickly was futile. There was no way around it: she was pregnant.

She was pregnant with the child of a monster.

Robin choked back a sob as the reality of the situation crashed against her. How had this even happened? Well, logically, she knew how it had happened- she wasn’t an idiot. She’d had sex. Several times over a few weeks. But she wasn’t supposed to have gotten pregnant! It wasn’t supposed to be possible, after all, even if they hadn’t used protection! Nobody in recorded history had ever heard of a human and a Shadow Person having a child before! They weren’t the same species. They weren’t even close! Granted, most humans didn’t care to get close enough to Shadow People to find out exactly how compatible they really were, but if it was possible, it would have happened at least once before.

She’d met Krobus while scavenging the old quarry for wood. It had been late in the day, almost nightfall, but she’d needed more wood to finish the chicken coop Marnie had asked her to build. Robin had assumed the quarry would be safe, even at that time, because it was on the surface. Monsters didn’t usually venture out of the mines- it was too risky, there were too many humans- it just wasn’t worth it. Better for them to stay in the abandoned mines, where they wouldn’t be disturbed. Robin hadn’t found any wood worth salvaging that day, but she had found a male Shadow Brute, much to her shock.

They’d locked eyes, and both screamed bloody murder. In their shared panic, one went right, the other went left, and they’d crashed right into each other, knocking a few hit points off each other. Robin had screamed again, frantically digging in her backpack to find something she could use as a weapon.

“Wait! Wait! I don’t mean any harm!” the Shadow Brute had yelled, scooting backwards on his stubbly little legs. “Please! I don’t mean any harm! Don’t…. don’t… oh… Dear Yoba, please accept your servant’s soul into your light now at the hour of our death!”

Robin stopped in her tracks. The panic in the creature’s voice, as well as the end-of-life prayer had caught her off guard. Shadow People believed in Yoba? And they could speak proper English?

“I’m… not going to kill you,” she said slowly, dropping her bag on the ground and raising her hands in what she hoped was a universal “unarmed” gesture. “You can talk?”

“Of course I can talk,” the creature said as indignantly as he possibly could while still eyeing the human warily. “Why would I not be able to talk?”

“I didn’t think monsters could talk,” Robin said.

“Well, that’s rude. Of course we can talk. It’s the humans who don’t want to talk! Your kind always just screams and tries to kill us!” the Shadow Person replied. “You never introduce yourselves, you never wait to see what happens, you always just attack us!”

Robin blinked. “But… monsters always attack us first, and then steal our stuff!”

“Your stuff?” the creature asked incredulously. “You steal OUR stuff! Humans are greedy and violent! They strip-mine caves that rightly belong to us, while slaughtering us, take all of the fish out of the lakes and rivers, and cut down all the trees! You even kill your own kind! And you call us monsters!”

Offended, Robin replied, “not all of us do that sort of thing!”

“Oh? What were you doing up here in the mountain then?”

“Well, I was looking for wood...” Robin trailed off, realizing how that sounded, given the thing’s accusations. “I’m a carpenter! I build things! I don’t destroy things, and I’ve never killed anyone. Human or otherwise,” she felt like she needed to add. The Shadow Brute looked at her. Feeling awkward, Robin continued. “I’m sorry I screamed and ran at you. You… scared me, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting anyone else to be up here. I’m Robin.” She held out her hand.

The creature studied her for a moment, then accepted the handshake. “I’m Krobus. And I’m sorry too. I’m uncomfortable around humans, but that was no excuse for the way I acted.”

They spoke to each other for a few more hours, long after the sun had gone down. They talked about various things- what sort of things they liked to do, their hopes for the future, what their respective lives were like. They talked about their favorite foods (Robin thought void mayonnaise sounded absolutely revolting, and Krobus seemed baffled by the idea of actually _cooking_ food), their hobbies, what their families were like. They even discovered they were both the same age- twenty. Eventually, though, Robin had to break the conversation off. It was getting late, and she had obligations the next day. They planned to meet up the next evening, in the quarry. 

The next few weeks continued much the same way. Robin and Krobus discovered they had much more in common than they might have otherwise thought. They got along very well, despite their differing species. Krobus had a lot of questions about human culture, and Robin was interested in everything about the Shadow People she could find out. 

Eventually, perhaps inevitably, the conversation turned to reproduction. Where more humans came from, and how Shadow People came into being. 

“Wait, you mean the metalheads aren’t your children?” Robin asked, surprised. Krobus laughed. 

“Are you serious? They can’t even talk and they look nothing like us! No, young Shadow People are just smaller. Not unlike your children. How do humans get pregnant, though? I don’t think you work quite like we do. You’re more… solid.” 

Robin blushed. “Well, human women carry children in their bodies.” 

“Yes, but how do they get in there in the first place?” 

“Well, human men and human women each have half of the genetic material it takes to have a child. Human men have an, uh… organ… that deposits their half of it inside of the woman, and together it grows into a baby.” 

“Yeah, but where is it? I don’t see anything on humans that seems like that would work.” 

Robin’s blushed deepened. “Well, we don’t show it off to just anyone. It’s indecent to just show those parts of you..” Pausing for a moment, she decided to just go for it. “It’s between our legs, though.” 

“Hmm...” Krobus mused. He sat quietly for a moment, then reached across and placed his hand on Robin’s thigh. Her breath caught in her throat, but didn’t squirm away or say anything. 

Krobus’s hand creeped across to the waistband of her pants and dipped below her waistband. Robin giggled a bit at the tickling sensation, then gasped as the Shadow Man’s somewhat-intangible hand brushed across the crotch of her panties. 

“AH!” she gasped as an electric sensation jolted up her spine. “Yes… uh… that’s where it is,” she murmured awkwardly. 

“It’s warm,” Krobus said, almost reverently. His hand seemed to melt into a tentacle shape, and it dove underneath, then up. Robin shattered apart. 

At first, Krobus was worried that he’d done something wrong, but Robin assured him that the exact opposite was true. “That’s supposed to happen,” she told him. 

Not too long after that, she found herself completely nude on the ground underneath the Shadow Man. It took some trial and error for Krobus to shape his fluid-like body into something resembling a human penis, or a tentacle, or something similar, but eventually they were rocking in tandem.  Robin screamed in bliss as Krobus’s homemade appendage reached farther inside of her than any human man ever had. “Right there!” she yelled, as the appendage hit her G-spot. Almost instinctively, Krobus curled his shadow-tentacle inside of his partner to probe more deeply at the spongy spot, exactly the way Robin wanted. 

For the second time that night, Robin felt her orgasm rip through her. Seconds later, she felt Krobus shuddering above her. 

Eventually he rolled off of her, breathing hard. “ The human way is very… exciting!” 

Robin laughed. 

For the next few weeks, almost every night, Robin and Krobus met up in the quarry, for “research,” as Krobus hilariously called it. 

Everyone who met her over those weeks commented on how happy Robin seemed. “Don’t tell me you’ve been meeting up with that weird purple-haired man too!” Marnie exclaimed after running into Robin in the JojaMart with a goofy grin on her face. Of course the entire town had known about the affair Caroline had- it wasn’t a leap of logic. 

“No, no, nothing like that,” Robin had laughed it off. If only they knew. The whole town would probably show up as an angry mob if they knew the truth. 

Eventually, though, the seasons changed. Spring started turned into summer, and it began to be too hot for Krobus to leave the mines at all. And both of them decided it was probably not a good idea for Robin to try to go into the mines. “Maybe we can meet again in the late fall,” Krobus suggested. “I’m going to miss you, though.” 

“I’ll miss you too,” Robin said. 

Krobus leaned over and kissed her.  While he’d figured out sex pretty quickly, kissing had been a bit more difficult to explain. While Shadow People had the same basic concept of sex, they didn’t have anything equivalent to kissing, and the idea had seemed  _very_ weird to Krobus. But eventually Robin had gotten the basic idea through to him, and he’d taken to it with a furiousness and determination she’d never seen in a human man. 

But now, staring down at the plastic stick, Robin regretted teaching him about kissing. She regretted telling him  _anything,_ honestly. After all, it had been telling Krobus about how humans had children that got her into this situation in the first place. 

The longer she thought about it, the murkier things seemed. Would she even be able to carry this pregnancy to term? Maybe she would miscarry. After all, she’d never heard of a human and a Shadow Person having a child. Maybe the reason was that the pregnancies weren’t viable long=term. 

It shamed her to realize that she halfway hoped for that. It would make things so much easier. If she had a miscarriage, nobody would pry too deeply into who the father was, and in fact they might never know if she rode it out on her own and didn’t go to the clinic. But there was no guarantee that would happen. An abortion was a possibility, she knew there was a clinic in Zuzu City that performed them, but the concept made her uneasy. Besides, she wasn’t exactly sure what a half-human pregnancy would look like at this stage.  If the doctor found out her baby wasn’t entirely human, what would happen? Would she be denied the procedure and locked in some sort of experimental facility? 

Actually, what would happen if her child was born and it looked like a Shadow Person? What would happen then? Would they  _both_ be locked up in some facility? 

Very rapidly, she was coming to the conclusion: she needed to tell Krobus. At the least, he should know about the situation. Perhaps he would be able to raise the baby among his own kind if it was born looking more like a Shadow Person. It might at least prevent a childhood spent being studied, poked, and prodded. And he had the right to know what happened if she  _did_ miscarry. The child was half his. 

But that meant going into the mines- somewhere she’d never been before, a place full of hostile, paranoid non-human creatures. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While pregnant, Robin lives among the Shadow People.

The mines were, to put it bluntly, creepy. Robin had never gone deeper than the mine entrance before, but as the old elevator descended, she could feel the air getting colder and colder, then rapidly warm up in an unnatural way. Krobus _had_ told her that the Shadow People had terraformed the deeper parts of the mine by tunneling into the dormant caldera even deeper below, but she hadn’t entirely believed him. Now she realized that she should have. 

Remembering that Krobus had told her most of the Shadow People lived below Level Ninety, she got out of the elevator there. There wasn’t anybody there. Just an extremely warm cavern, empty except for a hole in the ground with a rickety ladder leading downwards. Taking a deep breath, Robin dropped her backpack next to the hole, then carefully descended. She hoped that since she wouldn’t have anything with her that the monsters below wouldn’t see her as a threat. She was halfway down when she heard a commotion below. A Shadow Shaman had noticed her coming down and had started yelling, getting the attention of several other monsters. Robin heard a spell powering up, and decided to just jump down the rest of the way- both to avoid any projectiles and to put her arms up to show that she was unarmed.

“Wait! I’m looking for Krobus!” she shouted. “I don’t want to hurt anyone! I just need to talk to Krobus!”

The spell abruptly powered down, and the Shadow Shaman was looking at her what she thought was a confused way, although it was hard to tell with the mask.

“...you want to talk to Krobus?” the Shadow Shaman asked, in a raspy voice that clearly wasn’t used to speaking a human language. “What do you want to talk to Krobus for? How do you even know Krobus?”

“...it’s… kind of complicated,” Robin said awkwardly. 

One of the other Shadow People the commotion had drawn, a Shadow Brute, stepped forward, eyes wide..

“Grandmother, there’s something wrong with this human,” he said. “She smells like a human, but there’s something else there too… she carries void energy!”

“Impossible,” the old Shadow Shaman said. “Humans are surface creatures, they cannot bear to handle void energy.”

“I don’t know how,” the Shadow Brute said, “but look for yourself!”

“He is right,” a younger Shadow Shaman interrupted. “She does carry void essence in her body! I don’t know how it’s possible, but she definitely has void energy! Are you a human shaman?” he addressed Robin. “I didn’t know humans could have powers like ours!” 

“Uh, no,” Robin replied. “I’m not a shaman. But I’ve met Krobus above ground. I need to speak with him. I promise I don’t mean him, or anyone else here, any harm.” Suddenly, the younger Shadow Shaman flipped his mask up and got extremely close to Robin, who tried not to flinch. She’d never seen what was under a Shadow Shaman’s mask, she’d never even thought to ask Krobus about it, and now she wished she had, just so she could be prepared. She hadn’t been expecting the deep gouge scars and unsettling milky pink eyes- milky pink eyes that were now wide with shock. 

“She’s pregnant with a Shadow Child!” he announced. The old Shadow Shaman snorted. 

“Impossible,” she said again. “How would a human be pregnant with a Shadow Child?”

The Shadow Brute who’d figured out that Robin had void essence within in suddenly exclaimed something that Robin assumed was probably profanity in a guttural language. “Krobus!” he yelled. “That’s why she wants to speak to Krobus! She’s carrying one of us, by Krobus!” He turned back to Robin and suddenly became very polite. “Excuse me, ma’am, but could you please stand there for a minute?” he pointed to  a spot next to the older Shadow Shaman. “I promise no harm will come to you. Does anyone know where Praxi is?” 

“I’ll go find her, and if Krobus is with her I’ll bring him too,” the younger Shadow Shaman said, before hurrying across the mine floor to the next descent hole and disappearing down it. The old female Shadow Shaman muttered something under her breath in her own language before turning away.

The Shadow Brute explained hurriedly, “Praxi is Krobus’s mother. Usually if a Shadow Person is going to have a Shadow Child the grandmother realizes before anyone else does.  If you’re really pregnant with Krobus’s child she’ll be able to tell.” 

“Ridiculous,” the old Shadow Shaman muttered under her breath. The other creature ignored her and stared openly at Robin, who shifted uncomfortably.

“...but I never thought I’d ever see a human who would get that close to us!” he added. “How did you do it?” he asked. Seeing the awkward look on Robin’s face, he quickly added, “I mean, you’re completely solid, aren’t you? I didn’t think it could work that way.”

“You’ll have to ask Krobus,” Robin replied, uncomfortably.

Eventually, the younger Shadow Shaman arrived back with a female Shadow Brute in tow, and behind her… Krobus. Upon seeing Robin, his eyes widened. “What are you doing down here?!”

“I… needed to talk to you,” she said. “But I ran into them first.”

Krobus’s mother interrupted. “How do you know this human, Krobus? Were you on the surface again!? I told you not to go out!”

“I was looking for diamonds and prismatic shards,” Krobus muttered under his breath. “This is Robin. We met and came to an agreement, we wouldn’t attack each other.” The older female monster waved a shadowy tentacle-like arm dismissively, then squinted at the human woman in front of her. Then, she gasped.

“You carry void essence within! Are you a witch?” She moved closer. “No… you’re not. You carry a Shadow Child! My grandchild!”

“That… that can’t be possible,” Krobus stammered.

“That’s why I came down here,” Robin replied. “I’m pregnant, Krobus. And the only person who could be the father is you. I needed to tell you.”

The elderly Shadow Shaman shook her head. “So it has happened. The stones told me it was only a matter of time, but I hadn’t wanted to believe them. With our two worlds growing ever closer… it was bound to happen. I didn’t think it would be in my lifetime, but the stones were insistent. Human girl, you must listen to me.” She flipped her mask up, and Robin tried not to recoil at the scarring and pink eyes. “You must not go back up to the surface until your child is born. You will be in grave danger.” She stepped closer and grabbed Robin’s shoulders. “If you return to your own kind, _they will kill you..”_ Robin fought back a shudder.

“Elder, I don’t think that’s the case,” Krobus said. “While I have not met any other humans yet, I don’t think Robin’s friends would treat her that way.”

“SILENCE, bridge-crosser!” the Shadow Shaman shouted. “It is the same story we come across over and over. Humans destroy anything they do not understand, and a human woman pregnant with your child is not something they would understand! Once the child is born, it will likely be safe for her to return home, but until then, she will live among us. This is not up for discussion!” she cut off any dissent from the group of Shadow People there.

Robin was taken deeper into the mines, to a secluded area that likely never saw any human activity even when the mine had been a working one. The area was full of monsters- there were a large number of slimes kept in a pen that wobbled menacingly as she walked past, and Krobus aimed a kick at a Lava Crab that took a little more interest in Robin than he was comfortable with. A few random Shadow People outside of small structures that Robin assumed were their homes looked confused as they watched their neighbor walk past with a human’s arm in his.

“This is where I live...” Krobus explained as they stopped in front of one of the structures. “You’ll stay here for now.”

“But my business….”Robin trailed off. Krobus winced.

“You’ll have to make your excuses when you’re able to go home,” he replied, awkwardly. “Or I’ll help you sneak out tonight to close it down. But we’ll have to be quick, the Elder and my mother will be watching us carefully.” He sat down and looked at Robin seriously. “But before any of that, I want to know- how did this happen? I didn’t think… it _could_ happen,” he said. “We’re not the same species.”

“I really don’t know,” Robin replied uncomfortably. “I didn’t think it could happen either.”

“Well, we’ll get through it,” Krobus said bracingly.

The next nine months were a crash course in Shadow People culture. While most of the people in the little settlement were wary at first of having a human woman living amongst them, they quickly came to accept that Robin didn’t mean any harm. Upon learning that she was pregnant, a number of the Shadow People brought traditional gifts that they would an expectant mother of their own kind- strange pastry buns filled with a really rancid paste that Robin handed off to Krobus (although he didn’t like them much more than she did- at least he could eat them without becoming violently ill, which she couldn’t), roasted Lava Crab (which actually tasted pretty nice), obsidian disks encrusted with rubies that Krobus explained were traditional crafts that could often fetch a high price, prismatic shards, and some bizarre stuffed toys that were for the baby.

“When you get back home, you can sell the prismatic shards, humans like them too, I think!” Krobus said excitedly. “And the dolls are so cute! Valurax is a great seamstress! The baby will love them!”

As time went on, Robin began to feel more and more fatigued by normal things, which the old Shadow Shaman said was only to be expected- the baby needed Void Essence, which Robin couldn’t produce on her own. The remedy was to have Robin drink a purple infusion that made her retch, but once she’d gotten it down, she usually felt more energetic. She and Krobus also kept up their relationship until her stomach got so large it was no longer practical. Oddly enough, Krobus’s mother Praxi had suggested it on the grounds that usually pregnant Shadow People were… amorous. Both Robin and Krobus had been about ready to explode from embarrassment after that conversation.

The pregnancy lasted nine months, like a normal human pregnancy, but the labor was difficult. Shadow People didn’t have a concept of an epidural, so Robin had to go through the birthing process like humans had for millenia before modern medicine. Her screams were so loud that multiple Shadow People had come running to make sure everything was okay. One neighbor had assumed another human had come across them and was trying to kill Robin, so he barged into the hut with a knife only to immediately backtrack once he realized what was _actually_ going on. Someone else had gone to fetch Praxi and the old Shadow Shaman to help out. Once the two women got there, they kicked Krobus out of the house to help Robin through her labor.

Six hours later, it was done, and Praxi laid a screaming baby boy on Robin’s chest. “It’s done,” she said in wonder. “Krobus, you can come in here and meet your son,” she shouted out the door. Seconds later, the Shadow Brute charged back in to behold his partner and his new child.

“He looks so… human,” he breathed. “But he still looks sort of like us.”

The baby boy looked mostly human, but had a few odd features that suggested that he wasn’t… quite. Not only did he have quite the mop of inky black hair, darker than any human child Robin had ever seen before, his eyes were a dark brown with slight pink flecks in the iris, instead of blue like most human babies. But he yowled like a human child, and he latched on to Robin’s breast to eat like a normal baby.

Once he’d fallen asleep, Robin handed the baby to Krobus, who held him gingerly, like he was afraid the child would break. As he stared down at the new life, Krobus’s face broke into a wide smile. Living amongst them, Robin had learned that smiling was not a natural expression for Shadow People, but Krobus seemed determined to show his more “human” side to his new son.

“What should we call him, Robin?” he asked.

Robin smiled. “I was thinking Sebastian. Sebastian Krobus Matthews.”

/END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, a lot more people than I expected read _and_ seemed to like this! Thank you all so much! 
> 
> I may write more in this universe later- with Sebastian growing up being half Shadow Person, what happened with Krobus and Robin, things like that, but it might be a little ways down the line. Right now I have about a half-formed idea for sibling fluff between kids Shadow Sebastian and his human half-sister Maru, but it's still in very early outline stage. 
> 
> Again, thank you all so much for reading! I really appreciate it, you're all awesome!

**Author's Note:**

> Reasons Why Sebastian Could Be Krobus’s Son: 
> 
> Doesn’t like going outside when it’s sunny  
> Lives in a basement  
> LOVES Void Eggs  
> Gives you Void Essence if you’re married  
> Seems to like slimes  
> If you have kids with him, has a dream about your kid as a Shadow Shaman 
> 
> Well, think about it. We don’t know who his real dad is. It could be Krobus, for all we know!
> 
> But honestly, this was mostly an excuse for xeno.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
